Last updated 19:43, Thursday, 24 July 2008

I AM SO flattered! They’ve named the baby after me!

Did you see that? Brad and Anj (I can afford to be familiar) have named their daughter Vivienne.

Her twin brother is Knox which is definitely NOT me. I am never able to hang on to the family’s gold supplies, never mind a nation’s.

I hope, for all our sakes, that by the time you read this column about my little namesake, you will have had a chance to see photographs of the twins and we can all get back to life as we know it.

FIVE million pounds! That’s what the magazines are going to pay for the pictures. and apparently a deal has been done.

In fairness to the Pitt/Jolie couple, it has to be said that the money is going to charity.

But, as I have said so many times before, what on earth is going on in our society that anyone would pay that much for photographs of couple of kids we don’t know and are never likely to?

The birth of Vivienne and her brother whats-his-name came in the same week that the Guiding Association revealed the results of a survey which showed that many young girls, as young as 10 to 14, think it is normal behaviour to self-harm.

It claims that they are having to cope with a modern world of anxiety and pressure. It says they face sexual and consumer pressures to grow up too soon.

These girls feel under pressure to wear clothes that make them look older, and have to cope with advertising and magazines selling adult images.

Two-fifths of the girls taking part in the survey said they felt worse about themselves after looking at magazine pictures of models, pop stars or actresses.

What is the message we are giving to these kids?

You are right to worry because, as sure as heck, nobody is going to pay £5 million for a photo of you and your kids if you are a ‘normal’ person.

It is sick, sick ,sick.

And nowhere was that sickness more evident than on a television programme I saw the other night about an 11-year-old who is being trained by her mother to be a beauty queen.

The programme followed the fortunes of a little British girl and her younger brother as they prepared for a contest in America.

It was, without doubt, one of the sickest things I have ever watched. My husband had gone to bed and I was watching it on my own and found myself yelling at the television screen.

This child, who wouldn’t have known proper childhood if it slapped her in the face, had peroxide hair, thick make-up and shaped nails.

Her family joked about the fact that she was thick but pretty - a true blonde!

The mother was bad enough. She pushed kids, who really seemed to have no interest in what they did.

When the family was out having a meal at a Chinese restaurant she forced the reluctant daughter to stand up and do a cheerleading routine. She criticised the girl constantly and freely admitted that she was determined that her daughter would have the modelling career she herself had never had.

The mother was criminally stupid and should have had her kids taken off her.

But the father was the one who should have been tortured and shot. He was apparently supposed to be the sensible one of the two, who said he could not really understand his wife’s ambition.

He appeared to have abdicated all paternal responsibility and just went with the flow to reinforce the idea that his little girl was thick but pretty.

I am sure that if this child had a terrible accident or something that scarred and damaged her face, she would not be able to depend on the continuing love of her parents.

It is evil to rob a child of its childhood.

We live in an evil world if children think it is normal to self harm and where girls spend more time looking like Barbie than playing with her.

There is so much hysteria today about protecting our kids; we don’t let them go out and play because of the perverts lurking around every corner. We can’t let them go and play in case they hurt themselves.

But do you know what? The biggest danger to our kids is often ourselves.

Its the parents who put all the pressure on their kids to grow up too fast in this celebrity obsessed culture that has Jordan as a role model for an 11-year-old.